Oh,for gods’ sake.

” … if Christ has not been raised, thenour preaching is in vain and your faith is …. ”

Well … not to put too fine a point on it … Gone for a ball of chalk. Sorry, Saul. Busted!

Yes, we’ve heard them all, haven’t we? Or something along those lines.

However …. people, all people at some point in their lives are more gullible than they will ever feel comfortable to admit.

But religious credulity is one of the real biggies. The monumental con job of all time, and in my online experience probably the most difficult to engage believers on.

I am sure they can be reasoned out of it, but I just don’t know the right words to even try and never being a believer it still comes as a real surprise to read adults write the type of religious nonsense one finds all over the blogosphere.

I try to imagine the type of person that is – or appears to come across as – utterly convinced they have been saved (sic) whereas I am going to Hell and/or are the tool of the Devil. For me, it is simply does not compute, and yet, there are a great many out there who sincerely believe this.

Sad, but true. And make no mistake, people can be fooled … the Devil fooled me, right?

*Sigh*

Found this comment on a similar topic and decided a little levity for a Sunday Morn. Nevertheless, it illustrates the point nicely.

Time for a coffee….

Letters are received at 221b Baker Street, London, in the name of the private detective Sherlock Holmes. So he must be real.

Almost immediately, the building society started receiving correspondence from Sherlock Holmes fans all over the world, in such volumes that it appointed a permanent “secretary to Sherlock Holmes” to deal with it.

There was even a row about it when a museum set up for all things Sherlockian was opened.

A long-running dispute over the number arose between the Sherlock Holmes Museum, the building society Abbey National (which had previously answered the mail addressed to Sherlock Holmes) and subsequently the local Westminster City Council. The main objection to the Museum’s role in answering the letters was that the number 221B bestowed on the Museum by the Council was out of sequence with the other numbers in the street: an issue that has since vexed local bureaucrats, who have striven for years to keep street numbers in sequence. In 2005, Abbey National vacated their headquarters in Baker Street, which left the museum to battle with Westminster City Council to end the dispute over the number, which had created negative publicity.

Ah, back in the Beat Days the City Lights Book Store, San Francisco, published the bulk of Jack Kerouac’s literature and went to court over the poem, “Scream”. Few people realized that the general manager listed on the letter head was actually the store owner’s dog. He received a great deal of mail.

Yes, people believe what the wish. And they don’t budge without a fight.

Whoever wrote that is wilfully ignoring the entire swath of human history where human’s have died for lies, half-truths, and pleasant dreams. History is full of instances where a few wealthy men have convinced a few million poor men to die for them.

Scientists and researchers are getting closer and closer to finding and proving Sasquatch exists! 🙂

From October 2013. Link at bottom:

“Bigfoot is real, and now at least one scientist claims there is proof.

A group of Sasquatch researchers who have been collecting over 100 pieces of evidence over the past five years screened “never before seen HD video” of the alleged creature at a news conference in Dallas [Texas] on Tuesday.

The footage, which came from a similar effort dubbed The Erickson Project, led by Adrian Erickson, included what the group said was a sasquatch moving through wooded areas in Kentucky.

Dr. Melba Ketchum, who has led the group of researchers called the Sasquatch Genome Project, has been working on a $500,000 analysis of DNA samples from an unknown hominin species. Ketchum calls the project “a serious study” that concludes the legendary Sasquatch exists in North America and is a human relative that arose approximately 13,000 years ago.“

For the last 27-years Sasquatch stories have always struck me as very similar (identical?) to all the various stories, folklore, theologies, beliefs in the Abrahamic religions. I mean, honestly, what are the differences between Bigfoot and the focal points of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? I think you can find many of them between the four beliefs.

Hahaha! Now that’s one I haven’t heard, other than the sniper Ghillie suit. Kentucky backwoodsmen DO INDEED have a “reputation” of all sorts of shenanigans… both real and ficticious. Mostly the former. 😉

Bigfoot IS real, pal! I’ve had beers with him before. He stays hidden because he actually has very tiny feet, like a size 5, and he feels that, should this be found out, he’d die from the shame of not really being a “big” foot. You must accept this as true because…well…because why would I make something like that up?

Well DAYUM Jeff. Since you put it like that I think I’ll put my faith in your story IF you spice it up a lot more, embellish it, give size-5-BF a lot more personality than always running away. And if you go beyond that… and write some testaments about Him then there’s absolutely no way I can ignore or deny your storytelling veracity! 😲😁

Actually, I see no basis for this belief “I am sure they can be reasoned out of it”. Upton Sinclair’s old saw “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” applies here in that believers have already accept [payment (in a belief they are saved) and they have to hold up their end of the contract. Pile on top of that that they must admit to being gulled by a hypothetical scheme as vacuous as this (if there is a god, if the is Original Sin, if that can be forgiven, ….) and this makes a very tough row to hoe for mere reason.

I am beginning to suspect we need a religious approach, some kind of religious methadone to wean them from their religious heroin addiction.

Ark, learning, possessing, and dialoguing with Steve’s “methadone” is exactly my method — sometimes it does indeed work IF the faith-believer I’m speaking with believes their God did indeed give them an advanced brain, wants them to use it, and understands the concept and purpose of good critical-thinking skills, just like when it comes to dialoguing about Sasquatches and their existence or non-existence.

But to be honest, in this part of the world and this part of the U.S., common Abrahamic believers are much more interested in how their faith benefits them in societal-group dynamics, e.g. business relations, revenue-profit, job opportunities and security, family, friends, proprietary marriage contracts, or simply emotional affirmation/support. It rarely has anything to do with truth/facts or historicity of legendary characters. Self-preservation, not universal truths. Hence, most faith-followers don’t waste their time with me because as THEY see me, I have nothing better to offer them. Hahaha! If they only knew. 😈 😉

“I am beginning to suspect we need a religious approach, some kind of religious methadone to wean them from their religious heroin addiction.”

Very interesting comment, Steve. I think religious methadone exists (moderate and liberal believers/denominations). Perhaps they were once hooked on religious heroin, but ended up becoming addicted to the methadone. As I’m sure you already know, methadone is a slow-acting opiate. I see people in my everyday life who are religious methadone addicts with no intention of weaning themselves off it. They inadvertently help keep conservative believers addicted to religious methadone and religious heroin.

Posts like Ark’s serve to help people wean themselves off both religious heroin and religious methadone addiction.

The idea of methadone is not “cure” the addict, it is to allow the addict to function in society without violating laws. Having seen the impacts of the heroin and the methadone, such people are unlikely to vote for laws that weave heroin addiction into our national fabric. Plus their children and colleagues are going to see this and maybe disbelieve in the heroin peddling agencies.